Waking Dreams
by Rurouni Star
Summary: [Sequel to 'Lost and Found'] Pain is a fact of life. Draco Malfoy has learned this. After seventeen years, his pain comes in the form of waking dreams.
1. Prologue

**Waking Dreams  
****By Rurouni Star**

For any that don't know – this is a continuation on Lost and Found. You should probably read that first, if you want to know about Malfoy's past, profession, and current state of finances… I'm sure if you read, though, you could pick it up (if you very much wanted to). For age references – Malfoy's generation is in their thirties. Sirius is right there with them, having been returned at the age he left. The war is over, and casualties were bad. Most of the war generation is scarred in some way.

**Prologue**

There is a state of mind.

It is formed by taking part of your humanity, part of your concern for others and your belief that everything will – _must_ – turn out in the end and hiding it away in the deepest, darkest corner of your being.

He didn't lose it voluntarily.

But, by some curious paradox, he was already halfway there when it started.

_Staring eyes, curved lips, sneering at death he never saw…_

Belief in the good of mankind. What utter bullshit.

_Dead.__ He'd never been there, but he saw it in his dreams every night… their bodies strewn, they were staring at him, asking him for help he couldn't give…_

He'd visited the graveyard. He'd seen it. He'd talked to the cold stones, engraved with the meaningless names of people he'd once despised. A few times, the vivid thought had hit him that the exact same bodies, the living beings he'd once spoken to and spat at, were lying beneath his feet. Rotting, exactly like in his visions…

_He couldn't have been there. It hadn't been his problem anyway._

There is a state of mind – one where you push all what-if's and tortured half-wishes into a place they can't reach you.

Draco Malfoy still could not attain it.

-----

_"And so it is with great regret that I must retire from my teaching and return to the forests…"_

_Malfoy rolled his eyes and shook his head at the dignified horse-man, whose mane had begun to tint grey in the past few years. "You're barely middle-aged," the Potions teacher drawled. "You're not old enough to retire."_

_Firenze__ looked over at him with the same piercing look he reserved for unruly students. Malfoy, as usual, ignored it, and remained casually slumped backward in his chair in the Great Hall._

_"I miss my home, as you would miss Hogwarts should you ever leave it," the centaur stated stiffly._

_"And who're we supposed to get to replace you?" Draco said idly, picking at a chicken wing. "You're the only Divination teacher in years that's taught anything useful at all."_

_McGonnagal scowled at him from over the table. "We shall make do, Mr. Malfoy," she admonished. "If our Divination teacher wishes to return to the forest, we will not hinder him." The woman's own severe stare had long since lost its effect on him, though, and she turned her face exasperatedly to the rest of the staff table, who was discussing this latest development in hushed voices._

_"Come now," Lupin said from his place across from the platinum haired man. "I'm sure we'll find someone suitable. Firenze has already taught for a good nineteen years – if he wishes to retire, it is surely within his rights."_

_Malfoy glanced toward Professor Snape's chair instinctively, looking for his former head of house's support, but the man wasn't there. Not that he usually was – the man lived in his dungeons._

_"There are a few candidates on file," Dumbledore told the centaur kindly, his blue eyes twinkling. "I can have one in place in as little as a week, though I highly suggest you finish your term."_

_Firenze__ nodded, grateful. "I will do so."_

_Malfoy frowned, and looked down to his meal in distaste. It wasn't that he was particularly fond of the centaur – he very rarely saw the Divination teacher, in any case – but he definitely was not looking forward to another hack like Trelawny…_

_"I just hope Dumbledore's judgment's gotten keener since he hired her," Draco murmured grumpily, and shoved a spoonful of salted potatoes unceremoniously into his mouth._

-----

Oh how he regretted not putting up more of a fight.

"You can't be serious," Malfoy stated flatly, glaring at Lupin over Dumbledore's shoulder, since it was an unspoken rule that one never glared at the Headmaster. "We are talking about the same woman? The one that thought I was some muggle political figure in disguised exile from Lebanon?"

Lupin merely looked amused – he took a sip of his tea while Dumbledore responded cheerfully. "Yes, that was an interesting article, wasn't it? You must admit, the evidence was strong-" At Malfoy's unhappy look, he shrugged and relented, for once. "Yes, we are talking about the same woman, Mr. Malfoy. I do hope everyone here will be treating her with some measure of civility."

And with that, the horrid man disappeared from the staff meeting, leaving them to talk among themselves like good little sheep.

Malfoy scowled, and wondered for the moment whether that wasn't what they all were. Whether Dumbledore weren't really some evil, all-powerful deity in disguise, shaping their lives for his own amusement.

The evidence, as he'd said, was certainly strong.

Sighing in disgust, he left the room for his own chambers, wishing this had not been the first news he'd received on his return to Hogwarts. It was customary that they have their re-introduction staff meeting the day before the beginning of school.

That meant the horrible woman would be arriving tomorrow, with the students. Damn it.

The man waved at his candles as he entered the room, and they lit obligingly, casting dancing shadows about it. It seemed the house elves had done a good job in keeping it as he'd left it before. A spot of luck in a luckless day.

"What qualifications does the awful woman have, anyway?" he demanded of his bed, kicking at the oak frame – and recoiling in pain as his foot hit it.

"Damn it," Malfoy hissed, sitting down on the edge of the bed to rub at his abused toes. "Well if she's expecting some sort of welcoming party, she's going to be sorely disappointed. Maybe…"

His lips curled upward maliciously.

"Maybe I can get that idiot's help, down at Hogsmeade. He still owes me one for that bit of covering up last year…"

Yes. Yes, this year might not be nearly as bad as he'd thought. And if he had his way (which he usually did, despite his now much-lowered position in society) Luna Lovegood would not remain as Divination teacher for very long at all.


	2. Reintroduction

**Waking Dreams   
****By Rurouni Star**

**Chapter 1 – Reintroduction**

The older man regarded him seriously from behind the counter of the shop, red hair blazing like a vengeful flame of vengeance. Or else Malfoy was just feeling particularly vindictive and poetic all at the same time.

"You _do_ realize I knew her in school," George Weasley said, though his voice was merely curious and not reprimanding.

Malfoy shrugged, leaning back into the wall. "And this matters why? You never had any problems with pranking _me-_"

George snorted. "That was completely different and you know it."

Draco shifted then, raising an eyebrow. "Then you never had a problem with McGonnagal. Or Ernie MacMillian. Or, dare I say, Hermione Granger, very recently-"

"Fine, fine," George sighed, raising his hands in surrender. "Goodness knows, I thought we had that far behind us."

The former Slytherin shrugged. "Whatever I can use," he answered not-so-cryptically. "We both know McGonnagal would have your ears for getting her drunk – _and_ we both know your being a grown man wouldn't do much to deter her from taking appropriate revenge."

George scowled now. "Just tell me what you want and promise you'll never cash in on that favor again. Because I know a certain man who once held the Potions master position before you who'd really like to know who set off that explosion seventh year-"

Malfoy thought he kept his composure rather well, all things considered. He kept his face carefully schooled and decided to get this over with quickly, for all that he and George had found themselves on… cordial terms, at the least, during the time he'd taught at Hogwarts.

"I need a very temporary delayed reaction love potion," he responded smartly. "And it's going to have to be sweet tasting, or at least bland." Then, after ticking this off his hand, he continued. "I know that'll take a while to whip up with those specifications, so I want a Misplacement Bug and a Shrieking Sticky and a Mini-Boggart."

George eyed him unhappily, probably imagining those specific products coming into contact with poor, daft Luna Lovegood.

"Is that all, your highness?" he muttered, pulling the requested items brutally from beneath the desk, where extra stores were kept. "You do realize that the Mini-Boggart is highly unadvised for those with a dark history and/or suicidal tendencies or pregnant women-"

"Yes," Malfoy said, rolling his eyes. "I do. I release you from all liability and blah, blah, blah." He eyed the shelves around him speculatively. "Oh, and add in a Reverse Key. Those things are rather versatile, if I do say so myself."

George added his request to the bag and handed it to him. There was a hint of a smile playing about his lips, though. "Don't be too cruel, Malfoy," he said. "And… if she comes in here asking for a few choice items to get her revenge… well…" He smiled. "Business is business."

Malfoy, being Malfoy, shrugged. "I understand completely, Weasel." At this last point of conversation, he grabbed his bag and pivoted on his foot, walking outside the glass door and into the rainstorm…

George smirked to himself, mentally counting down the seconds until the Shrieking Sticky activated. One was usually supposed to activate it by licking it and sticking it somewhere, but any kind of moisture worked just as well…

The screeching started exactly three seconds later, from some place on the other side of the street.

George hummed to himself as he opened the register to count up the money and mark it down for the day.

-----

Luna Lovegood was still a very strange person.

It hadn't changed, not in the years he'd not seen her. She still had that discomfortingly dreamy expression, those large crystal blue eyes that blinked seldomly and always made you uneasy when they did so. She was quite a bit like Trelawny, he realized, except for the undeniable fact that she seemed more genuinely out of it, and not quite so much a posturing beetle.

Malfoy did have to admit, reluctantly, that she was somewhat pretty, in a serene, glaze-eyed, far-off kind of way. Her dirty blonde hair had the tendency to glimmer gold in the torchlight of Hogwarts, and her skin was a shockingly white cream color – much the same as his had been described, on occasion.

He hated her utterly and immediately.

"It should be nice working with everyone," she said with a vague smile as she greeted the students during the feast, standing up to be introduced by Dumbledore. "We should have a good year in Divination – as long as the Nargles in the mistletoe behave this year, that is."

A few students laughed, but most of them knew, at least by reputation, that Luna was the editor of the Quibbler wizard-tabloid, and that she probably believed there _were_ Nargles in the mistletoe. Luckily, they wouldn't have to deal with this particular problem until Christmas-time, when said plant would be taken out to decorate the school.

She sat down at this and smiled serenely, moving to pick at her food in a strangely dignified way.

"It's good to see you again, Miss Lovegood," Lupin said from her other side, attempting to start conversation, most likely. "How have things been since the last time I saw you? It must have been – er – well, nineteen years, mustn't it?"

_Nineteen,_ came the unbidden thought. _He didn't see her when it all came crashing down, then… a pleasure reserved explicitly for me, I must assume._

The thought sent a strange kind of vindictive pleasure through him.

Lupin's gentle attempt at a conversation starter would have flopped rather badly with anyone else, but Luna Lovegood took him up eagerly. "Oh, it's been wonderful – did you know they confirmed a sighting of a crumple-horned snorkack in Sweden that summer? My father and I didn't get to see it, but the witch who did told us it had brown horns, and no one had ever been close enough to see that before…"

Lupin looked slightly distressed at the witch's enthusiastic response to his question, but of course the old werewolf would _never_ do anything less than polite – like asking her to shut her mouth, for example. Malfoy decided graciously that he would do it for him.

"Do you _ever_ shut up about your insane imaginings?" he demanded from two people over, keeping his face as coolly degrading as possible.

Luna turned to regard him with her usual smile. "Oh, you're teaching here, then, Malfoy? I'd heard, but I wasn't sure… oh, I've wanted to ask for the longest time, but did you ever get back to Lebanon to fix up that mess-"

"No," he stated shortly, unhappy that his barb had served only to draw her attention to him, across Sinistra and Vector's seats. "And I never lived there, you idiot – you went to school with me, don't you remember?"

She smiled. "Oh yes, I remember. But there are all sorts of ways to set up aliases…"

Malfoy decided to tune her out, then, and spent the remainder of the meal stabbing viciously at his steak, wondering what he'd done in the past year that was bad enough to make Dumbledore torture him so.

Oh yes. He'd insulted Granger and her dead friends. And he'd tried to curse a newly resurrected Sirius Black. _And_ he'd let slip to the ex-convict that the bushy-haired woman had Avada Kedavra'd Bellatrix.

Well, he thought moodily as he stared at the mutilated meat, at least he _knew_ why he was being degraded so.

Though he would remedy it very, very shortly.

-----

The Misplacement Bug was going to take some planning, he decided as he set his Sixth years to work on a particularly nasty batch of pseudo-poison. Lovegood wasn't likely to just give him an opening to stick it somewhere lasting, and any close behavior with her would immediately alert Lupin to his intentions.

It wasn't that he particularly disliked Lupin – the man was impossible to dislike, after all – he just knew the man too well. He _would_ interfere with anything he tried. And, perhaps, if he let himself admit it, he didn't want to see the man's disappointment in him at such a childish bout of tricks.

"Bacon!" Malfoy snapped suddenly, catching the Hufflepuff's mistake out of the corner of his eye, "It's two lacewings, not the whole damn bottle!"

The boy blinked, then shook his head with a bit of silent laughter and set the bottle down to carefully take two of the delicately veined objects from the top. Malfoy frowned. Was it too much to ask for them to fear him half as much as Snape?

Well… yes, he supposed it was. Mostly because none of them thought he meant it when he threatened them with bodily harm.

His eyes turned to the other side of the room, where the Gryffindors were working together. Surprisingly, he hadn't had nearly as much trouble with them during his many years of teaching as he'd once have suspected. In fact, the Gryffindors usually obeyed him a bit better than the Slytherins, which irritated him sometimes.

"Yates!" Malfoy said loudly, as though trying to make up for his unwitting acceptance of the house. "What color is that potion supposed to be?"

The black-haired pest looked up at him cheekily and grinned. "Yellow, sir!" he called back, sounding amused at his own mistake.

Malfoy rolled his eyes. "And what color _is_ it?" he asked impatiently.

"Yellow, sir!" the boy replied easily.

The student next to him raised a disbelieving eyebrow.

"It's got blue in it as well, I suppose," he admitted, still grinning.

"That would make it green, wouldn't it?" Malfoy said, exasperated. "They ever send you to primary school, you cheeky bastard, or do you just pretend to be this dumb?"

The boy's grin widened. "I'd wager it's a little of both – the school wasn't too keen on art appreciation, you see."

The Potions Master snorted, and rose to walk to the sixth-year's cauldron. He shook his head as he reached it. "You can still salvage this, but you'll have to add more nightshade. And _don't_ forget the neutralizing ingredient either or I'll make you drink it yourself!"

Yates chuckled, and did as he was told. "I'd hate to throw up all over Sarah's Charms homework too," he chortled. The girl, who had been sitting beside him, edged away uneasily as she watched the potion slowly turn back to a more healthy yellow color.

Malfoy sat back down and, instead of grading more potions, began to imagine a school free of the strange heavy air that had suddenly suffused it. To his mind, the time before Luna Lovegood was already looking more perfect, more pristine, and more unattainable by the moment.

-----

"You been to Loony's class yet?" a student was whispering excitedly.

"No, but I've heard…"

"Yeah, you heard right, I bet. Darnedest thing I've ever seen…"

Malfoy frowned at his students talking. "I'd pay attention," he told the two Slytherins sharply. "You're in seventh year, start acting like it or you'll get yourselves into some true pain."

One looked up at him with another snarky grin. Funny how those were much more annoying when coming from his own house. "I'm sure I can scrape something together," the boy said.

He felt his eye twitch.

"There are much worse things than being poisoned," Malfoy said silkily, remembering a little of the way Snape had taught his class in his time. "You're going to be working on memory-altering potions this year, for example… wouldn't want something necessary missing, would we? Like, for example, your _name._ Or your _first year._"

As the smile faded slowly from the Slytherin's face, Malfoy felt his annoyance fade to a kind of sadistic pleasure. He began to understand where Snape got it from. "Be interesting, a seventh year with the eleven year olds, relearning his basic spells," Malfoy said, leaning back again. "But I suppose if you don't mind, I don't either…"

The other student muttered something, and his friend turned his gaze unflinchingly to the board, where instructions had been written. They weren't starting the potions today, obviously – they were just reading on the theory. But the theory was every bit as important, as they should have well known, having managed some semblance of a good grade on their OWLs…

Their commentary on 'Loony's' class, though, disturbed him slightly. He'd have to find out the next day from his other students' conversations what that was all about. The lower years would have had her by then.

-----

That night, he went to dinner feeling just a little weary. First days always were, though he could wish otherwise.

Loony Luna was not at the table.

He frowned. This was when he had been anticipating his attack.

"Where's the nut-case?" he asked as he sat down next to Lupin instead of taking his usual spot. Flitwick had no backbone, he'd just move somewhere else anyway.

Lupin raised an eyebrow but said nothing about his new seat. "She's taking her meals in her room for a while until she gets settled in. I think she's unpacking a little at the moment." The man regarded him curiously. "Are you asking because you're genuinely concerned or because you were hoping she'd left?"

Malfoy crossed his arms over his chest and decided not to answer.

But he ate his dinner rather quickly for those that watched (it included most of the hall, at one point or another), and got up from his chair very early. Early enough to visit the Divination room.

"Have fun helping unpack," Lupin told him cheerfully.

Malfoy decided not to dignify him with a glare.

…

"Do come in," came an awfully familiar dreamy voice from inside. Malfoy scowled – he had purposely refused to knock politely and slipped in silently. The woman was nowhere in sight, but she already seemed entirely too aware of her surroundings for his liking.

"Don't mind if I do," he muttered darkly, critically taking in the starry forest scene, which now contrasted sharply with stacks of boxes in various states of unpackaging.

At first, he didn't see her – but then, a small golden head popped up from behind one particularly high stack of boxes. Luna waved cheerily, her hair pulled back with a blue-swirled bandana as she rummaged through the top box.

Malfoy stepped over a few boxes carefully, a few blades of grass crunching beneath his feet. Although he wouldn't readily admit it, he had very much enjoyed having the centaur for a Divination teacher – he'd spent the occasional time underneath the magically created canopy of stars, lounging beneath an oak and relaxing. It was unlikely he would return to do any such thing with Luna Lovegood as the new instructor. The idea made his mouth twist into a deep frown as he kicked surreptuously at one of the boxes.

"How interesting," she said with a smile, her head tilted slightly to the side. "So you're the dragon in the crystal ball."

He snorted as he caught sight of a box of what looked to be tea leaves, inwardly thinking that the 'dragon' had probably been more the product of her overly active imagination than any real talent in the area of Divination. If indeed _anyone_ had talent in it other than the centaurs.

Malfoy forced himself to be polite, knowing his subsequent success hinged on it. "I thought I'd come up and see how you're adjusting," he said with eyes cast to the ground. _You idiotic, dreamy-eyed imbecile,_ added a tempting voice in his head.

"Oh how thoughtful," Luna beamed, moving out from behind her boxes and reaching out to pull one down. On inspiration, Malfoy moved forward to grab it for her, his other hand darting out with his ill-gotten prank item and brushing the top of her head on its way.

_Success,_ he thought with a private smile.

With exaggerated care, he placed the box into her hands and nodded his head. Luna didn't seem to notice anything strange in this behavior, for she simply smiled again and put the box on the ground.

"Would you like some tea?" she asked him pleasantly.

Malfoy thought first of declining, but then decided to see just how well his newly-acquired prize worked. "Certainly," he said graciously, brushing the hair out of his eyes.

"Oh wonderful," she said, "I'll go find a tea set, in that case…"

The woman moved to a table at the back of the rather large room, where a small cabinet sat. She opened it silently – then blinked at the empty inside.

"I suppose I haven't unpacked the tea set yet," she said with an apologetic look at him. "Although I was certain…"

"Perfectly fine," he cut in smoothly, his smile quite genuine now. "I'll just go and get some from the house elves before I go to bed." Malfoy moved toward the door, stepping back over the boxes he'd kicked at and opening the trapdoor. "I should probably get going – I have some homework to grade. Let me know how your classes behave."

He made to leave before she could respond, but somehow, a delicately pale hand had stopped on his shoulder. He stopped, a strange and all-consuming rage roaring up within his mind.

_How dare she touch me, the filthy woman, the incompetent bitch-_

Malfoy restrained himself to look up into two slightly concerned blue eyes.

"Do be careful," Luna said in a soft voice, unknowingly grating over his sensitive nerves. "If I remember correctly, your birthday was near the winter solstice… any actions in bad faith are likely to backfire."

Malfoy caught his breath. Had she guessed? Was this her way of warning him she knew what he was trying to do?

No. No, that was impossible. She was just being her loony old self.

"I'll keep it in mind," he said, then wondered whether he ought to have sounded a bit less dry.

Malfoy continued walked out brusquely and, without looking back, closed the door behind him with a snap.


	3. Lost

**Waking Dreams  
****By Rurouni Star**

Sorry about the long wait. Let's chalk it up to a very, very long series of bad days and the holidays and leave it at that, shall we? Some important things that have happened since last update: Snoweyes started a parallel story focusing on Ginny (Sanctorium) which we're collaborating on to make it fit with the whole continuum. Go check it out. Also, I've started an LJ Community called "The Cookie Nook" where I issue anime and book series-generic challenges to the members every once in a while. The information is on my profile, but the address (minus the spaces) is:

http : www .livejournal .com /community /cookienook / 

In response to the question: SB/HG in this one? Maybe a little, but I'm mostly going to be focusing on Malfoy.

**Chapter 2 – Lost**

Everything about her infuriated him. Not lightly, either – it wasn't a slight annoyance, but a burning rage within him when she spoke, when she moved, when she _looked_ at someone.

When in a rational state of mind, it was easy for him to find the reason; some kinds of people just didn't work well together. Certain types could grate on your nerves with no effort whatsoever.

The awful thing about it, though, was that she _knew_ she could do it.

Sometimes, just to annoy him, he could swear she would stop him in the halls and talk to him in that soft tone of voice, sending tremors of spite through his body. The woman was poison – and even if no one else could see it, he could. He had had much more experience with people hiding behind masks than any other person at the school, excepting perhaps Severus Snape. Unfortunately, Snape never seemed to bother coming out of his hole except for imperative meetings and events.

But despite anything Malfoy might have been expecting, the results of his work the night before were not readily apparent the next day in his first class. Things went on as normal – and students were still talking excitedly about their Divination classes the day prior.

Moving to survey a Hufflepuff's steaming cauldron, Malfoy found himself listening in on a conversation between two of his third years…

"That's right," Adrian Winters was saying in a hushed voice. "She said my year was going to be really good, as long as I put more effort in during Spring…"

_How very astute,_ Malfoy thought with an inward snort. _As long as he works hard right before exams…_

"Well yours sounds pretty straightforward," his partner Drea said with a frown. "She told _me_ I was going to have to watch out for bats. Has Hogsmeade had a problem with them or something?"

Malfoy shook his head, passing off the student's work with a short word of approval. Bats. What went on in that woman's mind was beyond him.

"…told me mine next, and I'm going to have an accident soon unless I pay attention to where I'm going…"

"Herbology's going to be good for me this unit…"

He sat back down at his desk and scowled down at the pile of graded papers on it. Nothing to get his mind off of the matter.

So she'd been telling fortunes their first day. Granted, he'd never heard of the hack Trelawny doing her whole class – she'd usually started the class straight into their work with nothing but a single prediction of doom.

_…likely to backfire…_

"She's trying to goad me," he murmured to himself. "Or maybe she's trying to keep me off with a little hocus pocus. Bitch."

In his second class for the day, filled with the fifth year Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs, he heard other things that made him smile in vindication.

"She said she'd lost her lesson plans today," one Ravenclaw snickered. "Do you ever get the feeling that she's rather… not all there?"

"I don't know," said another doubtfully. "She's a pretty good teacher… though it seems strange that she keeps misplacing things that are right in front of her."

_The woman will be out of here in no time,_ Malfoy thought with a loosening to his chest.

"It's rather sad, don't you think?"

He frowned.

"Ten points from Ravenclaw," he barked from across the room.

The girl looked up, surprised and blinking. "What? But why?"

Malfoy tried to find a good reason. "Your mixture is bubbling, Miss Enders," he said curtly. "You should be paying attention to it, as it's currently a safety hazard."

Not a wonderful excuse, by any means, but it stopped her infernal talking.

_They didn't know her in school,_ he reassured himself. _Damn woman…_

At dinner that night, though, he found himself tensely watching the door for her arrival.

"Where is that woman?" he asked Lupin tersely halfway through the meal, eyes darting about the hall uneasily.

Lupin raised an eyebrow. "Concerned, Mr. Mal- Draco? I wouldn't expect it of you."

Malfoy ignored the slip on his name – only his students and Dumbledore were really allowed to call him by his surname anymore – and curled his lip. "Hardly. I'm just wanting to know she's not conspiring to set your animals free or some such silly thing. She might think they've been infested with a plague of invisible African munbees."

Lupin regarded him with warm amusement. "I'm sure she'd let me know first," he said. But his face had taken on a peculiarly amused expression that Malfoy did not find reassuring at all. In fact, the man's eyes were looking past him, beyond him-

"Mr. Malfoy," Dumbledore's voice said pleasantly, "would you mind going to welcome our new teacher at the door? It's very wet outside, I'm sure they'd appreciate a hot cocoa."

Suspicion immediately reared its ugly head. Dumbledore had just hired one of his least favorite people. Who else might he have dredged up from his past?

"We don't need a new teacher," Malfoy said in a low, cautious voice. "What are they coming here to teach?"

"Healing," Lupin responded promptly from his other side. At Malfoy's sudden seething look in his direction (He _knew?_ The bastard _knew_ about this?) the Care of Magical Creatures teacher shrugged and began to explain. "Many of your students expressed interest in taking the NEWT level healing course last year, if you remember. Enough of them did so that Dumbledore and I talked about restarting the course."

"Any number of things could have gone wrong," Dumbledore said with a strange twinkle in his eyes, "so naturally, I did not inform anyone of the possibility until it was certain."

"Until the teacher's almost at the front door?" Malfoy demanded, forgetting for the moment his immense respect for the headmaster.

"Precisely," Dumbledore agreed affably. He paused, then looked beyond him, as though seeing something in the distance. "Perhaps you should get that cocoa now, Mr. Malfoy."

Malfoy thought briefly of refusing, or of trying to shove the job off onto Lupin. But one look at Dumbledore's deceptively pleasant face convinced him he was doomed to the task anyway.

"Fine," he muttered, rising from his seat and turning to order a house elf to meet him at the door with some cocoa.

Lupin's eyes followed him curiously on the way out.

------

Malfoy, as usual, found he was regretting his easy acquiescence to Dumbledore's wishes just moments later.

He pulled his cloak more tightly about him, squinting his eyes against the rain that blew into the overhang in front of the door.

Damn Dumbledore. Damn Lupin. And damn Luna, just because he could.

His dark thoughts inevitably took a turn for the worse as he sipped the rapidly cooling hot chocolate he might or might not have been ordered to give to the new teacher.

_Fuck this._

Malfoy swirled about to move back into the castle, closing the door behind him. He could go back to his quarters and pretend to have waited for a while, maybe read up on his curriculum for the next day…

_Thud.__ Thud, thud._

Someone was knocking on the door.

Malfoy felt keenly and immediately the irony of the situation.

He turned about after only a moment's hesitation, banishing the cup and saucer back to the kitchens and pulling back open the large oaken door.

He saw…

Red.

A woman slightly younger, blazing, sopping hair dripping into sullen eyes. Skin that had once borne freckles now smoothed into ashen paleness. A ghost from the past.

"What the _fuck_ are _you_ doing here?"

Ginny Weasley looked up at him with the eyes of someone having a nightmare.

He didn't doubt that he was in her nightmares. Anyone who'd lived at Hogwarts then had nightmares, saw their friends and enemies, both, dying in a macabre parody of history repeating itself…

But when was the last time he'd dreamt of her death? Not recently. He'd forgotten her well until now.

Ginny didn't answer him immediately. In point of fact, she didn't answer him at all – merely stared at him incredulously, with haunted eyes. She had the appearance of someone who was well taken care of by others but refused to take care of themselves.

After a few awkward moments, he decided to turn about and begin walking, anger beginning to simmer at the realization of what Dumbledore and Lupin had done to him.

If she felt like following him, she would.

------

Dinner. If you could call it that anymore.

Luna was back, taking her meal. Almost as though she'd come down just to see Ginny and annoy Draco, though no one other than Dumbledore and Lupin were supposed to know she was coming.

And now, Dumbledore was talking loudly of her achievements, trying to bolster her confidence, no doubt. The old man didn't look at him, but Malfoy knew he was amused at the turn of events. Dumbledore always found a humor in torturing him, he was certain.

He tuned in and out of the speech, attempting to find the perfect pause to get up and leave.

Head girl her seventh year? Now that was strange. He didn't remember hearing about that one.

Of course, he didn't remember much of anything after his own seventh year. Someone might even have told him at some point, though he highly doubted it as very few people had actually taken the time to come see him.

He realized dimly that Dumbledore had stopped talking and that Remus and Luna had converged on Ginny.

"You can show me what you've done with the Divination room," Ginny was saying in a low, vaguely excited voice. "I've been wanting to see it -"

Malfoy choked, but thought he'd successfully managed to cover it. Luna had better _not_ have changed the damn room.

"Do try to be careful this month," Luna told her dreamily. "The planets are in conflict with your sign… any unplanned activities could be dangerous. And try to watch out for unfriendly acquaintances." Malfoy tried very hard not to snort at the obviousness of it all.

"But there's always a smidgen of good luck in every fortune… I think there's a nice little surprise in yours."

This time, he had to turn his head about completely to hide his snide smile.

"Trelawny would have disagreed with you," Ginny commented quietly. She was already sounding much less detached than she'd been when he'd first seen her.

At this point, Malfoy tuned them out and rose quietly from his seat, unnoticed. He felt like a quiet room, a warm fire, and a book; the whole damn situation could be forgotten for now.

But then, once he sat down heavily in a soft chair, wet hair almost dried by now, his teeth clenched. A thought had just occurred to him.

He couldn't touch Ginevra Weasley. Not if he wanted her brother to be _quiet_ on a few important matters.

Things were not going well, these days.

His hands slipped uncomfortably into his pockets – one encountered a small, round, plastic-wrapped object that he knew to be the mini-boggart. The hands came back out immediately, and he grabbed a book to steady himself. The thing had the same effects, was the same horrible creature. It only had a time limit.

He thought of its intended recipient with a hard scowl. He didn't care to think of her tonight.

Which was why he found himself deserting his chair by the fire and going down to the Divination room again.

-----

As he entered, he saw immediately that Luna Lovegood, in all of her golden, half-waking splendour, was upset.

And this, in itself, was a real, true sign that she was acting now. Because he had _never_ seen her upset.

To clarify, Luna Lovegood had never shown anything but calm to him – going all the way back to a certain time he'd locked her legs together for fun (second year) when she had simply smiled at him and remarked that she'd have to hop to class. Other times had proceeded that – culminating in the time he had held her and her friends hostage in his fifth year, and she had simply looked at him dreamily as Ginny Weasley bat-bogie'd him.

And now, her face was stricken, unhappy; her mouth was turned downward in a pained grimace as she searched vainly about her newly restored room for something she was unable to find.

"Oh," she said in a far-off voice. "Malfoy."

He found himself gritting his teeth at the name. "_Draco_," he emphasized. She had no right to call him by his last name. Not many did, anymore.

"I'm sorry," she said promptly, not seeming to realize she'd irritated him. "Draco. I was just- just looking for something. I've been looking for things all day, it seems. I'd rather hoped I left all this behind during school…"

_School is still here,_ he thought to himself. _And so am I._

"But I- I can't seem to find it," she was saying with large, distressed eyes.

_Look away, you fool,_ Malfoy thought furiously to himself. _Granger's turned you soft, the stupid bint- why couldn't she have gone and grieved elsewhere or given her stupid Christmas present to someone else-_

"What can't you find?" he asked casually, inwardly gritting his teeth as he realized she was playing him perfectly.

"Oh," she said vaguely, "My parents' wedding photo. I- I've had it for years, you see, and I was certain I'd just set it on the table over here…"

Malfoy eyed her critically, silently, for a moment. It was just a photo, then. Nothing to be incredibly worried over, and once the Misplacement Bug wore off in a week or so, she'd find it in short order.

"Were you wanting to come down to dinner?" he said in a politely schooled voice, masking a mouth of venom.

"No, I- I think I'll look a bit more," she said. "Thank you, though, for coming up – it's very nice of you."

Malfoy ignored her and ventured down the ladder once more.

-----

"-lost the teacups today, someone had to find them for her-"

"But did you hear, Erin said she really did hear from her sister, you remember Loony said for her to watch for news from new family-"

"Her sister's not exactly new, though, is she?"

"Well yeah, but see this – her sister's having a kid soon!"

"No kidding?"

Malfoy frowned yet again. His muscles were beginning to tire.

"Yates, Bettles, would you _please_ focus on your poison!"

The Gryffindor boy looked up at him and blinked. "No offense, Sir, but what's been bugging you lately?"

Malfoy gritted his teeth. "_Nothing_ has been 'bugging me', Yates. Now focus on your fucking poison before I dock you points."

He shrugged, while Sarah beside him shot him a reproving look for his language. Malfoy restrained the urge to laugh aloud at the idea of a sixth year girl telling him off for saying a 'bad word' and snapped his attention back to a few particularly badly written essays. They would require some legibility charms, certainly…

"A nice one, though, isn't she?" said a Slytherin girl thoughtfully. "For all that she's loony."

_Fucking woman's going to give me a tension headache and she's not even here,_ Malfoy thought darkly, wincing as the tip of his quill snapped. _But damnit, she should just go back to her tabloid._

The bell rang, then, and he rose to his feet. "Freezing charms on the cauldrons," he instructed the students. "Before you leave, if you please, or you'll be losing points."

Every single student complied. They'd long ago learned not to disobey him when he was in one of his so-called 'hissy fits'. Malfoy decided with a growl that the first person he heard referring to this current one as such would get detention with Filch.

His next period was free, thankfully. He really needed a break.

He spent it reverse locking the Divination room's door.

-----

Dinner. Again, the resident insane woman refused to show up. More luckily, Ginny Weasley stayed in her part of the school as well, to organize her affairs. Or perhaps she really was afraid of him. Good.

"You look stressed," Lupin said calmly from his side. "Perhaps you should go see Poppy for a soothing potion?"

Malfoy muttered something to him that might have been construed as a 'fuck off'. It wasn't his fault if the esteemed professor heard it as such.

"You know," Lupin said pleasantly, "You usually begin using that word rather more frequently when you're truly unhappy about something. I would suggest a nice cup of tea, but you're in your stage of 'take no advice' so I won't." He paused. "I know you don't particularly like Luna Lovegood, but please try not to let her bother you too much. If things go on like this, you won't even have to see her except in staff meetings."

Malfoy decided not to comment, and instead dug into his steak violently. But his mouth ignored his brain a few moments later and said, "Why Ginny Weasley?"

Lupin sighed. "Because she's a good healer," he said quietly. "But, to a lesser extent, because she lost almost as much as you did."

_Weasley,_ came the sudden thought, unbidden. _Ron Weasley. **Dead.**_

Malfoy shuddered, feeling, for some unknown reason, that Ginny Weasley would not be such a problem after all. She could sit on the other side of the table – she could stay away from his classes – and he wouldn't be voluntarily stepping a foot in her room anyway… wherever it was.

"That's the spirit," Lupin murmured wryly as he took in Malfoy's sudden chill.

For what had to be the fifteenth time that night, Malfoy wondered where Looney Luna was.

-----

"You know, I really think something awful's happened," Elizabeth Baker was saying, about three days later.

"I know what you mean," Judith Chauncery affirmed as she stirred the cauldron idly. "Professor Lovegood looks so dreadful…"

Malfoy twitched.

"D'you…" Elizabeth lowered her voice. "D'you think someone's died?"

"Maybe," Judith said sadly. "But I would suppose that's really her business, isn't it?"

He wasn't certain whether he ought to be relieved or impatient that he wasn't getting more information.

"You know what's sort of funny, now that I think about it?" Drea said to Adrian as Malfoy stalked past their cauldron. "Snape caught me in the hall the other night… you remember Professor Lovegood said I ought to watch for bats?" She laughed at her own joke, but Malfoy interrupted her.

"Your potion is looking thin, Miss Adams, Mr. Winters," he said sharply. "Steep some more darkroot in it until it's a better consistency."

"Yes sir," they chorused, turning back to their work.

Stupid woman. _Stupid_ woman.

-----

The problem, he reflected later, was not that he had a reluctantly good heart (as Lupin loved to put it – he personally thought the man was overly optimistic).

No, the problem was that whenever he did something particularly nasty, people noticed.

"You've done something," was the first thing out of Lupin's mouth as he crossed the threshold of the cheerfully sunlit Defense Against the Dark Arts room, his face looking a bit more cloudy than the room itself.

"What makes you say that?" Malfoy asked nonchalantly, scratching a big fat "P" on a particularly bad piece of homework.

"Luna is looking harried," his former teacher said shortly – his wand flicked once, and a chair flew before his desk with a 'bang!'. The man sat down with a dark face. "What's more, you've been to visit her most every night this week-"

"Only two or three times," Malfoy interrupted, but it went unheard.

"-and George is looking guilty."

Both men paused for a moment as the reality of this statement sunk in.

"George has not, in all the years since I have known him, ever looked guilty about _anything,_" Lupin said. "Should I care to guess or will you enlighten me as to your methods?"

Malfoy scowled at him. "I haven't done anything," he replied easily – but his face was much too tight, he knew, for it to be convincing.

"I don't care," sighed Lupin suddenly, deflating. "I don't. I'm tired of trying to keep you on cordial terms with everyone when you seem so intent on mucking it all up. You're a good person Mal- Draco, but you're still a child where it counts."

A tiny shudder went through him, unbidden, at these words. Malfoy stared at him.

_Screaming at the pouring sky in front of a grave that wasn't real._

_"I wasn't there!"_

Lupin stood up abruptly, watching him carefully. "I know you've done something," he said. "I just hope you have the decency to fix it before _I_ have to do something."

Lupin paused, his silvered hair glinting in the golden sunlight.

"You know," he said, slowly and ominously, "that I can do something about it. I'm still in contact with Hermione – _and_ Sirius."

Malfoy pushed away his prior thoughts and very carefully tried not to shudder at the thought of his black-haired cousin bearing down on him. It had happened before; it was an experience he was not apt to repeat.

"I'm certain," he drawled easily, "that if I were doing something, I would have stopped at this point, _dear_ Professor Lupin. You needn't worry about me."

"Good," Lupin said. "Now what I'm really here for is to pick up a few things for Miss Weasley's class – it's scheduled to start next week, and there are some ingredients that we won't be able to get in by that time. Would you consider lending out some of your potions ingredients until we can get replacements?"

Malfoy carefully avoided his eyes and looked down at a paper.

"Take what you need," he muttered, sounding as ill-natured as possible. "Just as long as you're the one that gives it to her."

Lupin scrutinized him for a moment. Then, his mouth twitched unexpectedly, and Malfoy got the uncomfortable feeling that Lupin knew the old animosity had mostly faded. The man was _pleased_ with him, despite everything else.

How awful.

"Don't get any bright ideas about the wormwood," Malfoy snapped defensively. "I need it for next class."

"That's perfectly fine," Lupin said, moving toward the door of the closet of stores.

A few minutes passed wherein neither said a word. The clinking of glass and the careful scratch of a quill filled the silence – and soon, Lupin left quietly with his small load of ingredients.

Malfoy breathed out all at once and put his head down on the desk.

He was left, unmercifully, to the thoughts that Lupin's visit had stirred.

-----

_He'd come again._

_God damnit, why had he come again?_

_It wasn't his fault. He'd said before it wasn't his fault, and everyone that counted had **agreed** it **wasn't his fault**._

_He never went to Harry Potter's grave – likewise, he never visited Ron Weasley. But he always, always came to visit the empty grave of Sirius Black._

_He didn't know why. He'd never even known the man, past the tales his family told or the wanted posters with a madman staring out at him and laughing. Perhaps it was because he'd taken the road Malfoy had inevitably followed, only much earlier. Perhaps it was because Sirius Black had died a hero's death while he'd lingered on. Or maybe it was the simple fact that he had been tied to him by blood._

_Tonight was the rain. He wondered as he trudged if it might be able to wash him off at all. But it merely dripped off of his black soul like water over oily tar. Names never came off. His mark, his sins, couldn't be washed off by a bit of rain._

_The letters stared out from chiseled obsidian, like eyes from the dark of night. They pierced into his soul, uncovering things he never set free on his own._

**_You killed them,_**_ they seemed to say. **You stood by and did nothing.**_

_"I didn't kill anyone," he hissed. "And I saved your precious mudblood too, didn't I?"_

**_You did it for your peace of mind. Even in saving others, you're selfish._**

_"So what?" he demanded. "So what if I am? What's it matter, since everything's over and gone? I am what I am, and I'm not the dead one!"_

**_I died well. You'll die in ignominy. I took the blood traitor's path and I will be better known for it._**

_Malfoy felt a rage rise within him at the staring black letters. What was he supposed to have done? What could he possibly have done, other than what he had? He'd been in grieving, alone, friendless! What right did this piece of his own soul have to accuse him?_

_He looked up into the black sky, felt the rain drops hit his face._

_"I wasn't there!" he screamed at it in a rage. "I didn't hold the wand, I didn't cast the spell, I didn't even go with them! THE DARK LORD KILLED THEM, NOT ME!"_

_Nothing. The dark nothing of a pitch black night in a silent graveyard._

_The stone stood without recrimation._

_But the voice of Sirius Black had never been real. It had always been his own._

_"Would I have?" he whispered hoarsely, staring at the name. "Would I have gone if they had asked me?"_

_There was no response._


	4. Fear Itself

**Waking Dreams  
****By Rurouni Star**

Er… it _has_ been a while, hasn't it? Hope no one thought it was gone for good…

**Chapter 3 – Fear Itself**

"Hello?" he called as he opened the heavy wooden door. "_Hello?_ Is anyone here?"

A high, startled noise nearly made him jump. Luna looked up from where she'd apparently fallen asleep on top of her desk.

"I'm sorry," she said with a smile, her eyes only slightly shadowed. "Do come in. It's always nice seeing you." She turned to pick something up from beside her and placed it on the table. "And look! I found the tea set, finally!"

Malfoy laughed uneasily and sat down opposite her, pushing his robes back behind him. "You've been having some trouble, I hear?" he asked.

"Oh, perhaps a bit," Luna said with a kind of obviously forced cheer. "I'm sure things will look up soon."

_Yes, I'm sure they will,_ Malfoy thought darkly. _Because the werewolf went and hit below the belt._ "Most likely," he agreed amicably, watching as she heated the tea with a tap of her wand and poured him a cup.

Even the way she poured her tea made him want to hurt her.

Luna looked frazzled – there was no other word for it. But then, it was what he'd been trying for, so it shouldn't have shocked him quite so much.

She sipped at her tea and seemed to calm slightly. Soon, the tension that had been so evident in her body before disappeared, just as Malfoy slipped his hands into his pockets, as he'd taken to doing when he got uneasy. Again, he found the mini-boggart sitting in one, and again his hands pulled out quickly to stay limp at his sides.

"I'm very glad you came by," Luna said lightly. "Familiar faces are so comforting these days."

Malfoy suppressed his snarl at her tiny manipulation and pulled his wand surreptuously. "I'm sure that's true," he said. "When I first started teaching, I was lucky enough to have Snape to help me somewhat…"

The wand pointed under the table as he brought his own tea to his lips, savoring the clear, sweet scent for a moment.

_"Volcurem Letabo,"_ he said into the cup.

Only someone who was looking for it would see the slight shock at the back of Luna's wavy hair or hear the tiny squeal as the manufactured thing fizzled out.

Malfoy took a sip of his tea calmly – then blinked.

"This isn't the Hogwarts tea," he said in surprise and not a little alarm. "Where did you get this?"

It tasted sweeter. It had a unique tang to it that he couldn't immediately place – which made it dangerous.

Luna's smile was now back to its normal, serene state. "It's my own blend," she said. "I've never had anyone notice the difference before." Her face took on a thoughtful expression. "Perhaps because I never seem to have tea with anyone."

Malfoy stared at her for a moment, gauging her intent. She didn't seem to be waiting for him to drink more – and she _had _taken her own tea from the same teapot. Carefully, he took another sip, rolling the tangy liquid over his tongue. The Hogwarts house elves made fairly good tea, of course, but truly good tea took a unique kind of skill. He supposed he shouldn't have been surprised that their new Divination teacher could make it.

Though.

He frowned as he swallowed again.

That spoke of… well… some kind of qualification.

Malfoy shook it from his mind. Her qualification didn't matter. He wouldn't be able to survive a whole year of Luna Lovegood.

He blinked as he realized she was talking.

"What was that?" he asked instinctively.

"I said I was joking with you about Lebanon," Luna repeated, brushing a stray hair from her eyes.

Malfoy choked on his tea, quite certain that the plague of locusts and hellfire hailstones would begin appearing any minute now.

"Because you went to school with me, you mean," he coughed after a moment, while Luna watched with slight concern.

"Oh- oh no," she said, setting her cup down and moving to take his own while he hit at his chest to expel the tea from his throat, gasping. "Just that I don't think you would lie about it."

Malfoy stared at her, now beginning to search her expression for ulterior motives.

"You mean," he enumerated slowly, "that you can easily believe I somehow regressed in age, found myself a place in a pureblood family, and joined Hogwarts as a first year – but not that I might lie to you?"

Luna laughed, a soft, breezy giggle that made him think, of all things, of his mother. "But you _didn't_ lie that time," she pointed out with a glowing face.

Malfoy rolled his eyes at his cup and turned his eyes from her.

He looked up at the dark, starry pseudo-sky, his fingers curled about the steaming cup, and felt himself relax as he saw it spiral up into forever. Perhaps there really wasn't a ceiling – perhaps it did open up to a sky, somewhere…

"You see it too," Luna said softly, and instead of disturbing him as he might have thought it would, it soothed something inside of him that was still raw and aching.

"It's why I love this room," she continued quietly. "It's filled with peace of mind."

A stab of uncertainty hit him as he looked up into the infinite heavens, then.

"I think," he said stiffly, rising from his seat and forcibly pulling his eyes from the sight of the sparkling swirls of stars, "I think I should leave now." And then, despite himself, he found himself saying, "But I'll come back some other time."

Luna Lovegood surveyed him with an almost sad expression as he left – but he didn't see it, as he turned his back on her and disappeared out the door, his footsteps echoing hollowly behind him.

Draco Malfoy found, to his supreme frustration, that he could not sleep.

He had tossed and turned for three hours, found absolutely no rest, and was now coming to the unhappy conclusion that something more productive was going to have to be done.

It had nothing to do with Loony Luna. _Nothing._

Malfoy growled to himself, then stalked to the window to stare outside. He found, to his surprise, that it was misting gently.

On any other night, the vision of the crescent moon with its blurry halo would have been breath-taking.

Tonight, he shut his shades with an oath.

"Fuck her anyway."

"You look tired, sir."

"Yates?"

"Yes, sir?"

"I wasn't ever consulted for your career advice, as I remember. Perhaps you should apply for a position at the Ministry as 'Stater-of-the-Obvious'."

"I'll keep that in mind, sir."

Malfoy rubbed at his face with a growl, feeling the weight of a night with little sleep. As it was, he'd nearly told his second year class to put foxglove into their neutralizing potions instead of foxgrape. Thankfully, he'd caught himself and thought very furiously about what he was _supposed_ to say. The poor student that had suggested the next ingredient had found themselves down by ten points and sentenced to an hour detention with Filch.

'Hissy fit' was being murmured astutely by a few students, who nodded at each other as though he couldn't see them. Malfoy nearly dismissed his class then and there – but he managed to hold himself in check and only give them four rolls of parchment for homework instead.

The bell rang, the sound of glorious freedom resounding through his classroom for a few seconds – and then, in a blur, the students were gone.

The last period was over. Thank whatever higher being was watching out for him that day.

Malfoy leaned back in his chair and sighed, rubbing at his temples. He could really use some tea, he decided.

Then immediately frowned, at the thought that he was craving, inexplicably, some of _Luna's_ tea.

"Sir?" a voice asked from in front of him. Malfoy jumped, putting a hand to his suddenly leaping heart. He looked up to see Yates standing in front of him, looking down at him with a slightly concerned expression.

"Yes, Yates?" he gritted out, inwardly calming his furiously beating heart.

The boy was scrutinizing him carefully – Malfoy was almost surprised to see such calculation on his normally mercurial face.

"I meant what I said, earlier," Yates said quietly. "You're not looking very well. And I think I have some kind of idea why."

Malfoy twitched. "I'm sorry to tell you this, Yates," he said in a tight voice, "but you didn't develop omniscience from that bad potion you made."

His student gave a lopsided grin. "That's what everyone says. I'll believe it when you can empirically prove it."

Malfoy felt himself relax a little. If nothing else, he would always be smarter than his smart-ass students. "It _can_ be empirically proven," he replied. "None of the ingredients produce such effects, in any kind of amount or combination. Neither does any such potion exist."

Unfortunately, the quick side-stepping the conversation had taken didn't last. Yates refocused his attention. "If you want us to get rid of her," he said quietly, "we will."

Malfoy froze.

"But," Yates continued easily, as though he hadn't just witnessed a tell-tale sign of the truth, "I don't think that's what you really want. So maybe you should figure it out."

"If I need your advice," Malfoy said coolly, regaining his composure with an effort, "I will ask for it. Until then, it's five points from Gryffindor for disrespect and that potion you blew up last week."

Yates shrugged. "Sure, sir." He regained his smile, then, effortlessly, and picked up his bag.

And Malfoy was alone in the room.

A large frown had spread across his face with Yates' departure. His own behavior had been unnerving – he wasn't used to being quite so obvious about his feelings. When it was bad enough that his students could tell, there were problems.

The idea that he might not want her gone was utterly stupid, of course. Had he gone through all this trouble because he really wanted her to stay?

Yates was, and always had been, an idiot.

His frown deepened, suddenly, and he reached into his pocket to withdraw something small to fiddle with nervously.

But…

But.

Could he have possibly misjudged her?

The idea rankled. He didn't misjudge people. It didn't happen. He had spent his whole life looking behind the most carefully placed faces to see the ugliness behind them, the true motives behind the actions.

_You misjudged Remus Lupin and Albus Dumbledore. You misjudged yourself._

There had been certain moments of reluctant epiphany in his life before. Finding his mother could cry. Learning his father was not perfect. Discovering that he didn't know everything, that the Cruciatus hurt, that beneath Voldemort was not where he wanted to be. Understanding that Hermione Granger could grieve just as well as he could.

And now, he began to suspect his own motives.

He'd barely known Loony Lovegood in school. He'd hidden a few of her things, insulted her to her face, and otherwise been a rotten bastard to her, but he'd never actually _talked_ to her. Why would he have such an unreasoning hate of her now?

Malfoy realized belatedly that he had unwittingly begun to tear at the plastic wrapping of the thing in his hand. And then, once that avenue of nervous behavior had been exhausted, he'd begun to tap on it pensively…

It was a small ball, barely the size of his thumb.

A potent oath escaped his lips as he realized what it was. At the same time his mind discovered the answer, it slipped from his fumbling hands and bounced off the desk and out of sight.

_The mini-boggart._

Malfoy scrambled from his chair, now in a cold sweat. This was, possibly, one of the most idiotic things he could have done. His worst fears were things no one in the school would be happy about, least of all he himself.

He searched the room quickly, scanning the desks and shelves, then dropping to his knees as he realized that the tiny ball could be underneath the furniture.

Unexpectedly, his eyes encountered a pair of black shoes, swathed in equally black robes.

_If this is Yates again, by god, I'll make him scrub the hospital bedpans for a month-_

His eyes traveled upwards, past the hem of the long robes, up to a tall height that signified this person was most certainly _not_ Yates.

A pair of steely grey eyes were looking down on him.

He stood up slowly, but knew before he could make it to his full height that he would be barely at the man's chest. A cold, tight smile was on the other man's lips.

Sirius Black stepped back from him easily. But his eyes didn't leave Malfoy's.

"What is it, Black, can't you see I'm busy?" Malfoy sneered in the coldest voice he could possibly muster.

Black chuckled. There was an undertone of death to it that could not be mistaken.

An eerie chill went through him.

"What is it?" he hissed, uncomfortably aware now that the torches were flickering. "What do you _want?_"

He stepped back toward him now, and he noticed with alarm that this was not Sirius Black. Not as he knew him now. No, this was the Black of his waking dreams, the accuser in his soul.

"What's the matter, Draco?" he said quietly, the smile still chillingly in place. "Are you afraid of me?"

Malfoy stepped back falteringly, unable to tear his gaze away from the apparition.

"No," he said, but it came out barely a whisper. His back hit the desk, though, and he jumped.

"That _would_ be slightly silly," Sirius told him with his fearful smile. "After all, you're innocent, aren't you? No blood on your hands to speak of…" He was advancing slowly, easily – but Malfoy had a sudden fear of what would happen when he reached him.

"I didn't do anything," he hissed, his eyes darting around the room and landing on the door. _Closed._ "I didn't do _anything_, do you hear me?"

"You were a Deatheater," the other man said mildly, watching him. "You aren't going to deny that, are you?"

"I never denied it," Malfoy gritted out. "I still have the mark, I haven't destroyed it-"

"Does it redeem you, then, to bear your own personal cross?" the thing sneered, moving close enough that he could feel its cold breath upon his neck. "Does that repair the damages you've done, does that wash away all your responsibilities?"

Malfoy felt a surge of enraged desperation seize him. He pushed his hands into the semi-solid thing – it reeled back only slightly.

"I don't care!" he shouted at it. "I don't care what the hell you think I should've done, I don't care what happened, I don't care about anything! Why didn't _you_ do something, you bastard?" He pushed his finger into its chest – but found, to his sudden terror, that he was pointing at himself.

"No," said Draco Malfoy, the same cold smile playing about his lips. "I _don't_ care. I don't care about anything."

Malfoy stared at his own face in horror, suddenly painfully aware that he had just uttered those very words.

The doppelganger chuckled at his expression, then reached forward to touch him-

There was a hot pressure on his chest – everything was spinning – and the thing was _melting_ in front of him-

Something hard impacted on the back of his head, and the world disappeared.


	5. The Picture

**Waking Dreams  
****By Rurouni Star**

There's only one more rather short chapter after this. I said it would be short, did I not?

**Chapter 4 – The Picture**

_"You're still here?" a familiar figure asked quietly, her eyes watching the corner where he stared at his hand, lying limply by his side._

_He didn't answer._

_The stupid girl sat down near him – not close enough to touch, but on the same wall. She looked away from him to stare at the opposite wall._

_Apparently, she thought he needed company. _

_He was still a Deatheater. He was still sworn to kill her and all the dirty-blooded people like her. Just because he'd flinched at the torture of a real witch didn't mean he wasn't going to kill her with his own hands one day, certainly._

_"Fuck you," he said, quite clearly, communicating as well as he could the thoughts going through his mind._

_She didn't move from her place at the wall._

_"I said get the fuck out of here," he told her in a quietly deadly voice._

_At this, Hermione Granger turned to look at him, her brown eyes glimmering in the darkness. "No you didn't," she corrected him easily. "You just said 'fuck you'."_

_His fists clenched, and suddenly, he found his energy. "Then I'm saying it now!" he hissed, stumbling to his feet on legs that had lost their circulation. "Get out of here before I kill you, you disgusting little mudblood bitch! You think you can come in here and tell me you're so sorry or you'll be here for me or some kind of shit and I'll suddenly become one of your little groupies? You think you can make me so grateful to you I won't kill you the first chance I get?" _

_She didn't flinch, but she had to be frightened in some way. He moved toward her. "I'll make it painful," he said in a low voice, grinding it out with a vindictive, strangely cathartic pleasure. "We'll see how much I can make you bleed before you go-"_

_"Shut up about what you don't understand," she said suddenly, in a low, cold voice. "You don't understand anything, Malfoy. You never have. And you'd be so lucky to have Harry and Ron for friends – I just thought I'd give you what they gave me when I needed it."_

_Malfoy laughed, advancing on her and stopping to look down on her. "You think you're the prime candidate to offer a shoulder, then, do you? Go fuck yourself. No, better yet, go get one of your treasured friends to do it for you – I'm sure they'd jump at the opportunity-"_

_Hermione stood up – and at the same time, he felt something hard connect with his stomach, sending the air rushing from his lungs, stopping whatever else he might have said._

_"I don't see anyone else in here offering," she said in a hiss, her eyes wet from some extreme emotion. "Let me tell you something, you pompous, spoiled, inbred, superior **ass**! Do you think you're the only one who's lost something?" Her fist hit his jaw, next, and he felt himself stumbling back in surprise and pain. _

_"At least you still have a **mother**!" she was crying now, pushing him back, her hands grabbing the collar of his robes. "You think you're alone in your little world? You think you're so underprivileged because you lost someone you cared about to a war **you** started?"_

_He stared at her enraged face, red, with salty tears dripping onto his skin. _

_"It's been less than two years since I lost everything," she told him in a quivering voice. "I came here because I thought you might need the same thing every other human being needs when someone they love dies, no matter how little I might have thought of you or anyone else in your family." She swallowed, and tried desperately to compose herself as Malfoy pulled himself free of her grasp to tumble to the ground a few feet away._

_She looked away from him, toward the door._

_"If you don't care, though, I can't make you," she whispered. "Stay here all alone in the dark, for all I care. No one else will."_

_Hermione Granger walked out the door and let it shut behind her with a very final crack._

_And he did just as she'd suggested; he stayed in his corner, watching his hand, running his eyes over every single curve and vein and bone on it until Snape found him later and sent him out of the castle with a few galleons and the curt advice that the reporters would be there soon to ask how he 'felt' about all of this and he'd better be gone by then._

_But Malfoy never once cried._

Malfoy blinked, groaning as his headache kicked in full force.

"Oh – you're awake."

That was not the voice he wanted to hear.

"What the fuck are you doing here and why do I feel like shit?" he managed, realizing for the first time that he was in his own bed.

One hand reached for his forehead, then jerked back quickly.

"As for the first," Luna said, unfazed, "Lupin saw you weren't at dinner and sent me to check your room. I found you unconscious… evidently, you have a very high fever."

Malfoy groaned. He hadn't been sick since his last hangover – about two years ago.

He opened his mouth to tell her to get out (in a much more verbose way) when a cool, wet cloth draped itself over his vision.

"I'm making some tea," she said. "It's almost ready, if you want some."

Malfoy winced despite himself. "Where's Pomfrey?"

Luna shifted in her seat next to his bed to get something. "She's busy – but Ginny's already come and gone," she informed him. He heard her pour herself a cup of tea. "She said you must have been working yourself too hard. Have you been very stressed lately?"

The indignity of the situation just dawned upon him at the moment Luna took a sip of her tea. "You must have upset the nargles…" she murmured to herself.

"Fuck the nargles," he coughed. Usually, he kept such ideas to himself, but he wasn't feeling well enough to care at the moment. "Why did you call _her?_"

"My, you have an awful mouth on you when you're sick," Luna observed.

Malfoy thought about responding to that one, but the smell of her tea had wafted over to his nose and he felt a sudden, inexplicable, completely unrelated urge to be silent on the matter.

"Oh, here - I almost forgot," Luna said in her dreamy way.

A cup was pressed to his lips as one of her arms moved to support his back. He swallowed his pride and the tea both at once – and strangely, the mixture was the sweetest thing he'd ever tasted.

There was a small 'clink' as the cup was set down.

"I found my parents' wedding photo," Luna said thoughtfully. It sounded as though she were staring out his window.

His first instinct was to simply tell her he didn't care, but something - possibly the tea - held his tongue yet again.

_"I **don't** care…"_

Or perhaps it was something else.

"That's… good to hear," he managed with some amount of decency.

He had the distinct impression next that she had turned to beam at him. "Yes, it is. I spent a long time looking for it."

Malfoy felt something distinctly uneasy twist his stomach. "Why?" he asked, despite himself, pulling the cloth from his eyes to regard her.

There was a short silence, then; the kind that comes directly after an unexpected question.

Luna looked at him, her face slightly paler than usual, and opened her mouth tremulously-

And the door opened.

"Damn willow-root, we _would_ have to have only one willow on the grounds… I don't imagine Snape will enjoy getting more after this…"

A shock of red hair bumped through the doorway, blue robes swishing – Ginny was carrying a steaming cup and saucer in one hand while her other pushed open the door to the room. She turned about again then stopped cold, her green eyes trained on the upright figure drinking tea, and turned a livid, pasty color before clamming her mouth shut. Her hair framed her face, let loose like a wild thing, tangled curls bouncing up and down like ringlets of bright ginger. She stared, blinking at Malfoy in a sort of euphony of surprise that tinted her face a color similar to her hair.

"Well," she said, after a minute. "You're awake."

Malfoy gritted his teeth at the interruption she represented and the red hair that sent him into memories…

"Who the fuck sent _you_ an invitation?" he snarled, attempting to sit up on his own now and not seem quite so dependent on Luna's hand behind his back.

Ginny's eyes narrowed somewhat, but she quickly controlled herself and set the cup and saucer down, wiping her hot fingers gingerly on her robes before walking stoically to his bedside. "I invited myself," she said, the red of her cheeks slowly fading. "Luna was looking for Pomfrey and I was the next best thing." She looked utterly professional, the exact opposite of the ragged woman she had been the night before. Soon, Ginny had set about fluffing his pillows gingerly while flashing a quick smile at Luna. "That's better. You can… put him down now, Lu-"

"Perhaps you should let me put my tea down first," Malfoy advised curtly, setting the cup Luna had given him down on the cabinet next to him. The second-to-last thing he needed at the moment was Ginny Weasley making a muck out of his sudden onset of sickness. The last thing he needed was sitting next to him and holding him up with one hand.

He was definitely going to have words with Pomfrey about this.

"Perhaps," Ginny said, digging in a nearby cabinet. "Perhaps not. You're not going to get better from complaining." Emerging from the cabinet, she handed Luna a small vial of purplelish liquid and sent Malfoy a narrowed look. "Dreamless sleep," she said, pausing. "Take it with your tea."

Malfoy snapped his eyes up to hers. "And what," he said in a very low voice, "gave you the idea that I needed a potion of Dreamless sleep?"

Ginny hesitated a moment. He saw her eyes flick toward Luna – almost too quickly to catch – and he knew immediately that she wasn't going to give him a straight answer. Not with her dotty old school chum in the room.

"I don't know," she said finally, brushing her hands on her hips, heading toward the door. "I thought you might like to... sleep more deeply. That's all."

The wooden door shut with a sharp 'thud' that echoed just a little in the too-quiet room. Luna, who was still holding him up with one hand, stared after her friend with her normal, dreamy, thrice-damned oblivious expression.

"I wonder," she said in amusement. And that was all.

"Give me that," Malfoy snapped, snatching the vial from her hand with a frown. Luna turned to look at him strangely as he tried to pull the cork with shaky fingers.

_Goddamn the Weasleys. Every single one of them. Even the dead ones._

As he struggled with the vial, a certain green-tinged face, perfectly dead and twisted, came to mind.

_Especially the dead ones.__ Sometimes…_

A cool hand gently pulled the glass from his fingers.

"I can do that for you," Luna offered quietly – he knew without looking that she was staring at him with that horrible, sickening sympathy on her face. The kind that said he was cracked up, but she'd put up with it, and she'd feel sorry for it. He knew because it was what he saw in every face, on every acquaintance, now.

A soft hiss told him she had pried off the top.

"Would you like me to add some sugar?" she asked.

He didn't look at her. "That would make it useless," he muttered. "That's true of most potions – didn't you pay attention at all in school?"

"Not really," she admitted. "Only when something interested me, really. And I thought it more useful to learn to make something that tasted good."

It was perhaps the most coherent thing he had ever heard her utter.

Malfoy took the vial from her and threw it back. It burned as it went down, and left an acrid taste in his mouth. Luna tapped the edge of his teacup, and it transformed into a glass of water, complete with ice cubes. He drank it without a word and settled back into the pillow to let the potion take effect.

His eyes closed, and he thought of all the things he wished to forget.

Luna's hand brushed his hair from his eyes, and strangely, he didn't mind.

"It's strange, isn't it?" she murmured. "At eighteen years, it's still affecting us all. Even though it's just a memory…" Her hand moved back to stroke his hair. "In a way, we're all orphans from the war."

He felt his consciousness starting to fade pleasantly. "Some of us more literally than others," he told her quietly.

Luna's hand stopped, and he had the idea that she was smiling faintly. "Yes. I suppose we both went through that, didn't we?"

_Both?_

"Do you… do you have a picture of your father?" she asked suddenly, sounding slightly shaky.

"No," he answered tiredly. "I burned them all, once."

He felt something wet on his face, and felt her hand trembling in his hair. "I almost did that," she whispered. "Almost… but then, I thought _what if I forget their faces_…"

Something tugged at his understanding, then. A realization, on the edge of his mind.

"But really," she murmured. "I think…"

_The picture… the one she couldn't find…_

"…I think it's possible to go past it, eventually. Without forgetting."

The near-epiphany disappeared as he felt himself stop thinking altogether – the last thing he remembered was hearing a door close gently on his empty room.


	6. Truth

**Waking Dreams  
****By Rurouni Star**

Well. Here's your last, short chapter. I hope everyone's enjoyed the story.

**Chapter 5 - Truth**

At about seven am, Malfoy was awakened by the smell of bread and a hand on his shoulder.

"It's breakfast," Lupin's voice informed him quietly. "Would you like to wake up and have something to eat?"

Malfoy opened his eyes slowly, a gaping void in the place where his stomach ought to be. He heard an emphatic growl of hunger from it, but decided to ignore it. It was his room, anyway.

"Food would be good," he muttered, sitting up and eyeing a bowl of soup critically.

Lupin shrugged and handed the platter to him; he sipped at his tea as Malfoy demolished the meal.

"I'm glad you're feeling better," he said. "I take it Miss Weasley did an adequate job on you?"

Malfoy set the empty dishes on his bedside table and turned to look at Lupin with a raised eyebrow. "No comment," he said.

The older man seemed amused by his response, but he said nothing.

Malfoy frowned at him, suddenly deciding he could get what he wanted from his old 'friend'. "Whatever happened to Loony's parents, anyway?" he asked, knowing the question was out of nowhere.

Lupin's reaction was not encouraging. He seemed incredibly taken aback, in fact.

"You don't know?" the werewolf asked.

Malfoy grimaced. "If I _knew_," he said acidly, "I wouldn't be asking, would I?"

Lupin settled back into his chair, staring at him for a moment. "You're already sounding like your old self again," he observed. When Malfoy showed no signs of being distracted, he sighed. "You know, you're always putting me in the most awkward situations. I don't know why I put up with it."

There was another long pause.

"Her mother died in an accident when she was young," Lupin said. "Before she came to Hogwarts. Her father raised her on his own for a good while, until he died in her fifth year at Hogwarts."

Malfoy felt a chill go down his spine.

"H-how?" he croaked, suddenly feeling the food in his stomach like a hard lump of rock.

Lupin regarded him seriously. "He walked into the wrong shop," he said. "I think you'll remember the incident at the muggle antique merchant, in your sixth year."

Malfoy swallowed. "They said there were only muggle casualties," he whispered.

Lupin couldn't look at him. "That's what the authorities believed, for about three weeks," the other man said quietly. "Until Miss Lovegood made an inquiry as to his whereabouts." Then: "I was there, when she found out."

No further explanation was needed, to be sure.

Lupin sighed. "I've lost my appetite for conversation, it seems," he said, rising from the chair and picking up the dishes.

At the door, the man turned back to look at him; the grey in his hair seemed, for some reason, to have become even more prominent lately.

"She would forgive you," he said quietly. "Even if you didn't ask."

The door closed.

Malfoy thought for a few long moments before getting up out of his bed and walking over to his mirror.

He stared at the reflection he saw there.

His hair was disheveled, his eyes were blurred. His skin was an even paler shade than usual, and it stood out prominently against his dark black sleeping robes.

But he wasn't sinister looking, for all of that – his expression seemed more lost than malevolent.

_"Do you think you're the only one who's lost something?"_

He laughed, but only because he was confused and tired.

"I'm only human," he said to the haunted reflection. "Human and selfish and _stupid._"

He opened a drawer below the mirror and pulled a small, pinkish vial from beneath one of the crisply folded shirts. He stared at it for a full three seconds before throwing it to the floor.

It shattered with the musical tinkle of breaking glass. Seeped along the cracks of the stones like a sickeningly sweet river, before he vanished the whole thing with his wand.

"I must be clumsy today," he said, looking up at his reflection in the mirror. It smiled, bitterly.

"Sir?"

"Yes, Yates?"

"Are you feeling all right?"

"_Yes_, Yates, I'm _fine_."

"Are you sure?"

"_Yes._"

"Absolutely, positively sure, because you look sort of-"

"_Enough_ Yates, or I'll take another ten points."

The boy grinned cheekily and left his potion sample on the desk. It was horribly off-color. Malfoy supposed it must have been because he spent all of his study time coming up with ways to annoy his teachers.

The bell rang in the nick of time, saving him from having to brood ominously at his desk. It was harder work than it seemed, after all.

He picked up his wand and stowed it in his cloak before walking from the room and, in an unprecedented act, leaving for lunch before his students.

For once, he knew where he was going. And, as long as it had waited for him…

Malfoy pushed through the door easily, and startled a woman with wavy blonde hair and dreamy eyes as she worked to pack up her things.

"Oh," Luna said, surprised. "Did you need something?"

Malfoy shrugged. "I thought I'd ask how my fortunes are doing, lately. And possibly have lunch."

She smiled at him, and he discovered that it really did make her look remarkable, when one was looking correctly.

"You'll do well, as long as you don't upset the nargles again," she told him.

He smiled lopsidedly in return. "They need upsetting, once in a while."

And Luna agreed with him for the first time he could remember, as they sat down to talk beneath a sky that opened up to a world of stars, somewhere far away.


End file.
